I’m having an issue since I started trying to play 4K rips on my Apple TV. I’ve searched the forum here and found similar issues but none exactly the same.
Apple TV 4K 1st gen 32GB
Netgear Nighthawk(R) X4S R7800 router
Large 7200RPM HDD connected to router for file sharing via USB
Latest version of Infuse for Apple TV
Apple TV is connected directly to the router via ethernet and to my 4K television by HDMI.
I’ve never had a single issue with Infuse buffering 1080p movies, even 9-10GB ones. However with 4K rips of around 20-50GB I am getting pretty regular buffering.
My feeling is that this might be because there’s not enough space on the Apple TV to handle a large amount of caching. Sadly TVOS won’t give me much useful info about how much free space there is, just a bit on how big the apps are.
I’ve seen the advice about switching from Auto to Legacy caching but both seem to be about the same in terms of buffering. Weirdly I seem to get about 30 mins buffer free then it starts, every 4.5 minutes or so.
If I load the same large MKV files on my Mac over the network - from the same router - connected hard drive, I don’t get any problems.
I have run the speed test and the speeds look decent, although they sometimes seem to drop quite low (25) before picking back up again (109).
Is this just my Apple TV lacking space for caching? Any advice?
First, what version number of Infuse are you using? Infuse is updated frequently and it helps to know the version number.
If you let the Infuse speed test run longer ( say at least 50% to 75% preferably 100%) and then go to graph, could you post a screen cap of the graph?
What protocol are you using to connect to your drive? SMB, DLNA, UPnP, FTP etc?
If you pause the movie at the first buffering for a minute does it buffer again right away when you restart the video or does it take another 30 or so minutes before it buffers again?
Edit to add:
As a test you may want to copy one of the files that buffers on the router drive to your mac and set it the Mac up as a share in Infuse using SMB and see if it still buffers in the same way.
Additionally, we have a new playback streaming cache in progress which will allow for improved performance and reliability. This is scheduled to be available in the next update (7.3.7) which isn’t too far off.
Hi. Thanks for the answers - I’m not at home so will test the things you raise and come back to you. However I can answer these:
First, what version number of Infuse are you using? Infuse is updated frequently and it helps to know the version number.
It’s whatever is the latest version as of right now! Can’t check just atm.
What protocol are you using to connect to your drive? SMB, DLNA, UPnP, FTP etc?
My router is unhelpful on this front but AFAIK it’s DLNA, possibly uPnP. There is an option to open an FTP share but I’ve not had much luck with getting it to show up in Infuse.
If you pause the movie at the first buffering for a minute does it buffer again right away when you restart the video or does it take another 30 or so minutes before it buffers again?
Yes once the buffering starts, it’s every 3-5 minutes thereafter. Exiting the movie and restarting it from the point I left doesn’t seem to stop it from happening.
I’d strongly suggest you use other than DLNA or UPnP, they don’t allow you to get the most out of Infuse and the Library functions. Using SMB or FTP will let you take full advantage of Infuse.
I looked at the Users Manual for your router and it appears that it’s pretty straight forward to set it up for SMB or FTP so you may want to grab the manual and read through that section (chapter 8).
But what I asked is if you hit “Pause” when it starts to buffer and let it sit for a minute then click play does it play for a longer period before it starts the 3 to 5 minute cycle. (This should allow the buffer to refill and play longer)
Ah I see. No, if I hit pause it doesn’t play for any longer before the buffering starts gain. Sometimes it buffers for several minutes and I end up exiting the movie and then coming back in.
So what I’m seeing is really odd. With a 17gb 4K file, the transfer speeds were all over the place. The test actually cropped out with an error at 75%.
With smaller movie files of around 2gb I’m seeing very fast speeds of 200mbs up to around the first 500mb-1gb in transfer then a massive drop off to around 2mbs.
It very occasionally bursts up again for a few seconds but then it’s mostly back down to extremely slow.
With very small tv shows, around 250mb, I see very fast 200mbps speeds all the way to 100% loaded in a very short time.
The next thing I’d try is deleting the DLNA share and creating a SMB share on the router/drive. It’s almost like the DLNA server is choking on the bigger files.
It it persists I’d say try connecting the drive to the Mac and setting up a SMB or FTP share there and see if that changes things.
If you try to play the file that you transferred to your mac will it play there (either with Infuse on the mac or VLC)? Could it be a damaged file?
I’m 99% sure that it’s not the storage on the ATV that’s the issue.
I’d suggest you take the router out of the loop and copy the video to your mac and set up a share there and see if it works. Also, if you’re using SMB you may want to check that it’s not using SMB 3 protocol since that has a bit more overhead that SMB 2. Here is some more info on that in the users guide.
Btw I just tried deleting and re adding the smb share from inside Infuse on Apple TV. Then I went in and changed the SMB version from 3 to 2 and it seems to have made a massive difference - now when I run the test it blasts up to around 1-1.5GB of transfer before slowing down. I’ll have to do more tests but as long as it does that, and caches properly, that might be ok.
That’s not a band-aid fix, it’s a known issue on some systems. SMB 3 has a ton of security overhead on it and can really be picky on how well it works. That’s why SMB 2 is fine for streaming on a local lan.
So I just watched a 4K movie, 41GB file with no problems and no buffering at all. I’m now seeing the file caching ahead significantly in the progress bar, and I wasn’t seeing that at all before. I paused it at the start for a couple of minutes to give it chance to load ahead a bit. Then it kept caching as it should, and never came close to “running out” of preloaded content.
So it seems like it was changing from SMB 3 to 2 was what fixed it - that’s all I’ve actually changed.
